Photo credit: Courtney Apple
Or, How Poets and Novelists Became Video Game Superstars
One day in 1984, my father and I were walking through a Kmart, and we stopped to look at the video games. At the time, Kmart carried all the arcade hits that a 13-year-old boy might want — Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Asteroids — but the salesman at the counter asked if we’d seen Ray Bradbury’s new game.
“Ray Bradbury, the author?” my father asked. “He made a video game?”
“Not just any video game,” the salesman said. “It’s a sequel to Fahrenheit 451! One of the great masterpieces of science fiction!”
The salesman directed our attention to a computer monitor and there it was, the title of one of my favorite books rendered in clunky 8-bit graphics...